Stem cells

In vivo regeneration of interspecies chimeric kidneys using a nephron progenitor cell replacement system.

I wonder whether this interesting report of kidney regeneration might be relevant for repairing or rejuvenating dysfunctional kidneys in aging humans.

Human Pluripotency Is Initiated and Preserved by a Unique Subset of Founder Cells.

This seems potentially important to know about, for example, in the case that these founder cells are damaged or eliminated during aging. This group reports on their characterization of what they call "pluripotent founder cells", which seem to be foundational in a population of pluripotent stem cells. These cells "are marked by N-cadherin expression...reside exclusively at the colony boundary of primate pluripotent stem cells..." and "emerge prior to commitment events or phenotypes associated with pluripotent reprogramming".

Lineage Tracing Reveals a Subset of Reserve Muscle Stem Cells Capable of Clonal Expansion under Stress.

I thought it might be useful to know that this Pax7+ satellite cell pool exists, for example, in the case this marker is useful in characterizing age-related changes in human satellite cell heterogeneity.

Extension of Maximal Lifespan and High Bone Marrow Chimerism After Nonmyeloablative Syngeneic Transplantation of Bone Marrow From Young to Old Mice.

This group reports on what seem to be remarkable positive effects of bone marrow transplant in mice, with a significant extension of maximal and remaining lifespan when transplanted to mice at the age when half of the population had already died. These results may suggest the importance of stem cells in mammalian lifespan.

NAD+ supplementation rejuvenates aged gut adult stem cells.

This group reported that nicotinamide riboside could "rejuvenate" intestinal stem cells from aged mice and "reverses an impaired ability to repair gut damage". Interestingly, it appears that mTORC1 inhibition (via rapamycin administration) could prevent this effect, suggesting that NAD+ restoration may work through increased mTORC1 activity to restore some tissues.

Senolytic therapy alleviates Aβ-associated oligodendrocyte progenitor cell senescence and cognitive deficits in an Alzheimer’s disease model.

The findings of this research group (in mouse experiments) suggest that Abeta aggregates can induce senescence in oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, and senolytic treatments seemed to have multiple benefits in this model.

Stem cell competition orchestrates skin homeostasis and ageing.

I almost passed on this paper, but then I got to the part where they said "forced maintenance of COL17A1 rescues skin organ ageing" and it made me wonder how exactly they defined "skin aging". Some readers on this distribution list may want to look into this in more detail.

Age-related inflammation triggers skeletal stem/progenitor cell dysfunction.

This group reports a relationship between inflammation (i.e. NF-κB activation) and skeletal stem cell senescence and osteogenic function.

Microfluidic reprogramming to pluripotency of human somatic cells.

This may not be of direct interest to us, but the apparent technological and economic implications of this report seem noteworthy and relevant enough for us to know about. This group reports using microfluidics systems to manufacture human induced pluripotent stem cells ("hiPSCs") in xeno-free, defined conditions, using only 20 uL of growth medium per day, resulting in an "~100-fold reduction in costs of raw materials compared to those for standard multiwell culture conditions". This seems like a remarkable advancement.

TSA restores hair follicle-inductive capacity of skin-derived precursors.

This group reports that the HDAC inhibitor TSA (trichostatin A) "markedly alleviated culture expansion-induced, skin-derived precursor senescence" and restored the hair-inductive capacity of these cells. I thought this might have some relevance for understanding age-related hair loss or its prevention or reversal.

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